NEED FOR SPEED Headed to the Big Screen

Though board game adaptations are a recent trend, Hollywood has been adapting video games for years. The latest title to get a go on the big screen appears to be the racing series Need for Speed. Showblitz reports that screenwriter John Gatins (Real Steel) has been tapped to develop a pitch for a big screen iteration of the popular game franchise. Electronic Arts and UTA are now going out to Hollywood studios to shop the project around, and Warner Bros., Sony, and Paramount are said to be interested in the deal.

The Need for Speed series began in 1994 and has had a fruitful run on multiple platforms ever since. Given that the game simply consists of racing cars in different settings, studios are really only buying the title recognition. Someone could just as easily have written a movie set in the street-racing world and slapped the Need for Speed title onto it. Nevertheless, studios like to make money so I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll see Need for Speed on screens sooner or later. Battleship is an actual movie that exists, after all.